Kylian Mbappe will bring the curtain down on his Paris Saint-Germain career on Saturday and has the chance to sign off with another trophy in the French Cup final against Lyon.
Kylian Mbappe will bring the curtain down on his Paris Saint-Germain career on Saturday. And they have the chance to sign off with another trophy in the French Cup final against Lyon.
It will be Mbappe’s 308th and final appearance for his hometown club. For which he signed a €180 million contract from Monaco in August 2017.
That’s assuming the France captain, now 25, is playing at Lille. He finished PSG’s last two Ligue 1 matches of the campaign. Their 2-1 win at Nice on 15 May and a 2-0 win at Metz on Sunday.
It seems that he was kept out of these matches to keep him fresh for the cup final. PSG had already wrapped up the Ligue 1 title, although coach Luis Enrique hinted. That they are not entirely happy with their starman’s late request.
“This week we’ll see who’s ready, who’s not, and who wants it the most,” he said late last week.
The final of the French Cup is very important for us
Mbappe’s time with PSG has been full of silverware, at least on the domestic scene.
He has helped the Qatari-owned club win the Ligue 1 title six times and the now-defunct League Cup twice. Victory against Lyon on Saturday would allow them to claim a fourth winner’s medal in the French Cup.
But of course his time at Parc des Princes has also been marked by a lack of success. Where it matters most is in the Champions League.
Mbappe scored 42 goals in 64 appearances for Paris in Europe’s elite club competition. But PSG hasn’t lifted the trophy in those seven years — and has never won one until now.
With Mbappe there was access to the final in Lisbon in 2020. When PSG lost 1-0 to Bayern Munich in a game played behind closed doors at the height of the pandemic.
Two more appearances followed in the semi-finals, but he was ineligible in the second leg of the last four defeat against Manchester City in 2021 and was an unused substitute, and he simply did not perform that time. When he made a difference in the defeat by Borussia Dortmund. this season.
Real Madrid is expected to be his next destination. Mbappe will be hoping to finally win the Champions League after being away from Paris and France.
Inheritance
What mark will he leave in his homeland?
Mbappe has been a superstar ever since he joined the Ligue 1-winning Monaco team as a raw teenager in 2017.
He is an icon in France, and will remain so while playing his club football abroad. As were Michel Platini, Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry in the past.
But he will be determined to sign off with another trophy. In which PSG will get a chance to win both the Ligue 1 title and the French Cup in the same season. For the first time since the 2019/20 campaign cut short by Covid.
Mbappe’s history in French Cup finals has not always been a happy one, even though he has been on the winning side three times.
He was sent off for the 2019 final, which PSG lost on penalties against Rennes, and was injured in the first half of the following year’s final. Because Paris took the lead from Saint-Etienne.
But Mbappe usually arrives on the big occasion, and his final game for PSG will be his first since the 2022 World Cup. When he scored a stunning hat-trick against Lionel Messi’s Argentina in Doha. HD Live Sports
However, the danger for Mbappe and PSG is that they may not have it all their own way against Lyon.
Luis Enrique’s team won the title comfortably. But Lyon’s recovery since finishing bottom of the league in early December has been astonishing.
Pierre Sage took over an ailing side and took them to European qualification in five months.
The final is being played for the first time outside of Paris and its surrounding area. In which the Stade de France has applied for the upcoming Olympics.
The Stade Pierre Moray in Lille, with a capacity of 50,000, emerged as the obvious choice as the venue for the game given the identity of the finalists.